Just moved in. Massive regret. How soon can we sell up?

[Pearmain]

Ignoring the fact we’ve spent all our savings on stamp duty and fees and it’s going take a long time to save plus selling in a falling market and equity being at risk - how soon are you actually allowed to sell after buying?

Our last house I didn’t really want but dh could see the potential. I hated it. Cried most of the time, hated going back there. Exacerbated by flooding while I was 6 months pregnant (after coming out of hospital for a bleeding). Can relate to blocked drains above also.

However we eventually did an extension which sorted out some issues. I did end up falling in love with, it but we moved 6 years ago to a house I knew instantly was ‘home’.

In all we stayed in our previous house for almost 20 years. No extension & we’d have moved long before.

I burst into tears when I moved into my new place 2 months ago a new build.

the builders clean was terrible they hadn't opened a single cupboard in the kitchen so they were all filthy, the electricity was not on (thanks electrical company for putting it on next door!), it was pissing rain and the movers were in a strop because they were hungry.

I also had to do the move on a Saturday as I was covering my bosses job as well as my own so couldn't get anyone to cover me. For the first 3 weeks I was exhausted between coming home from work and unpacking, going to work to do 2 jobs, coming home and finding more things wrong with the house.

A friend dragged me out on the weekend of week 4 and took me to a beautiful little cafe 2 streets away from me and to the park. It reminded me why I had wanted to move from my previous place which was a 15 yr old sleeper suburb with very little community if you don't have young kids.

after a very structured email to the builders and my boss getting back to work I was able to take a week off and just nest - go to the recycling center with the ton of cardboard, drop off donations at the charity shops (why did I pack things I didn't use??).

The builder has had people in and out this week and more scheduled in the next few weeks to fix up the issues, I have put my pictures up and got things like my coffee table set up - amazing how not having those little things frustrates you!

I am starting to enjoy it for what it is, a better commute, a smaller place with less clutter and a proper adult office so I can WFH as needed rather than on the dinner table on a hard chair. And 2 great cafes walking distance from me :)

My first house, in between my last viewing & completion, the vendor had 'helpfully' painted the bedrooms, either the darkest purple or shit orange. The kitchen I thought we could manage to use until our new one was delivered & fitted once I had given it a good clean was so bad that 24 hours later, it was in a skip. Every room had to be gutted to bare boards & at least 3 coats of paint. We still moved in 3 weeks later even though we had only got the bedrooms decorated & carpeted & had only a skeleton of a kitchen with only a dishwasher, microwave, kettle & a sandwich maker. We made one of the bedrooms into a dining room & managed. We had date nights on a Friday night with a takeaway & a bottle of cheap wine, exh got put on permanent nights a month after we moved in & I was terrified to stay on my own but I coped, he worked Monday to Thursday nights & we worked all weekend on the house, we moved in on Halloween & by Christmas all the main rooms were finished. I was so proud of my house by then & how hard we had worked to get it finished, we didn't have a lot, most of our furniture was secondhand, but we had somewhere that was warm, dry & comfortable.

I felt like this immediately on moving into our place 18 months ago. It didn’t help that we moved from a big city to a regional town either. But the house is still not right (it’s so hard to heat!) and we miss the city so we’re putting it up for sale soon. We will have been here two years by the time we plan/hope to leave. And yep terrible financially given the timing, but life is short and we have young kids.

@Pearmain it has taken me 3 years to like my current house and I still don't love it. It is daft really as on paper it is so much better than our old house. But we had so many memories and happy times it is going to take a long time to feel as rooted in the new home.

Unless the housing market is strong in your area it is probably financially more sense to try and make the most of it and see how you feel in a few years. Plan some lovely things in the house, friends and family over and events, redecorate a room and start creating new memories and take it from there.

On the day we moved it the plumbing wasn’t working, the house was filthy (the had promised a professional clean - I had no water to fix that. All the doors were falling off their hinges - the door to our bedroom had to be removed till we got someone in. The tiles in the bathroom were shattered. The roof leaked, The heating while it turned on - didn’t heat more than half the radiator, the windows had massive gaps in them, it was so bloody cold - we couldn’t get the temp up above 16C - everything is a botch job, they needs redoing and this was a house that we were told was walk in condition (we bought it during Covid - so couldn’t look closely) The dog hated it - wouldn’t sit in a room by himself - kept walking past the gate he took 6 months to settle - even 1.5 years later we still can’t leave him alone in the house for longer than 5mins, it was hard to forgive the house.

Our last house never felt like home really. We'd moved from a house we both loved but had outgrown and there were some really good points about the house but just never fully settled there although we are there for 5 years in the end.

Give it a bit of time, save up and see how you feel on 6 months

Thanks for all your replies I am genuinely finding them a huge comfort hearing about your experiences.

The things that we liked about the house are still there - more space for us all mainly- but all the things I had doubts about do feel magnified right now.

The thing I’m taking comfort from from your experiences is that I might come round to being ok with it in time and if I don’t then it doesn’t have to be forever.

@tarrantulaplant oh no, that’s really unnerving when the dog doesn’t like the place. Is he any happier now? Are you feeling better about it?

I bought a house in 2007 and on paper it had everything we wanted. I hated it as soon as we moved in and cried for weeks. It was filthy and needed a lot of work. Also had issues with neighbours we hadn't been expecting. Spent time doing it up but still didn't love it and ended up putting it back on the market after 18 months

Credit crunch had happened by this point so it took 18 months to sell and we sold at a loss but was glad to be gone. Like a previous poster it had a weird negative energy, I've had fixer uppers since and not felt the same

Go you're feeling a bit be the now @Pearmain . It really is very normal to feel like this.

I felt quite panicked when we bought our house. I felt financially over-stretched and a bit panicked about that - we had rented a year longer than planned while I was on maternity leave sure to an earlier purchase falling through. We had spent savings and house prices had risen.

It seemed very cold and noisy when we first came in. Actually its neither - it just needed furnishing. Furniture breaks up noise and also once you're settled you're busy so don't notice it.

When we viewed it with their furniture, we hadn't realised there were carpet moths..... horrible things! There were also silver fish. Hate them. Silver fish disappeared within a couple of moths - it was just that the heating had been off a long time - they don't like heat/noise/light so while I'm sure there are still some in the attic I haven't seen anyin the house in 5 years. We did have to replace downstairs carpets to get rid of the moths, but that's ok and I actually love how it looks now.

There will be great things you don't know about yet. The big Windows that made it feel cold in Feb when we moved are amaaaaazing in spring/autumn - they catch the light and downstairs is absolutely lovely in thesunshine, it makes me feel so happy.

Give it time.

We moved and I didn't like the house but we had also relocated so I left behind my job and my fantastic friends. We moved 3 hours away so not even an easy day trip sort of thing to go back and visit. Then due to the banking crash we were stuck there.

In the end I just decided to make the best of what was good about it and ignore the shitty bits that I couldn't change like the stairs off the lounge so all the noise and heat goes up the stairs and change the stuff I could like carpet in both the en-suite and bathroom and the previous owner had toddlers 😨

It is completely normal to feel this way. I am on my 5th house since uni so know to roll with it, make the best of it, try to see the positives.

I think it's really common to move into a new house and find lots of things that don't work, need fixing. People don't bother getting things fixed when they know they're going to be selling soon. It's happened to me, my friends and my parents. You move in and just discover more and more things that need doing, it's so stressful and expensive.

Getting one room into a state where you really enjoy being in there helps. And knowing that whatever house you pick, this will probably be the experience - unless you're really lucky.

Sorry you're feeling like this @Pearmain (and everyone else who's been there too!).....

We've only ever bought project houses - and by that I mean the type your family/friends say they couldn’t live in whilst being renovated - so are used to living without creature comforts till we've (mostly DIY) improved the place, but I've never felt such an instant disconnect as I did when we bought our current house five years ago. Usually I'm able to see the potential and they always feel like home despite their condition, but with this one it was hate at first sight which only got worse after completion.

It was a repossession - a 400 year old detached stone former agricultural building that had been severely bodged by the two sets of previous owners. It also had no mains water so almost the first thing we had to do was get a borehole drilled (£11k).

On the first day I actually suggested to DH (who had persuaded me we should purchase) that we stick it into auction to get rid of it, I hated it so much. Instead we hung in there and set about changing virtually everything about the place, although for literally years I 'mourned' the larger, lovelier house we'd sold to move here.

We've almost finished now and are on the verge of selling in order to move the 250 miles 'home' to be close to the family we miss so much.

The house is unrecognisable and really beautiful now, plus it does - finally - feel like home...but I still don't love it and can't wait to leave.

Moving in to a new house is a process, not an event. Take some time to experience it. You may feel differently later.

i cried daily for at least 6months. The house still gives me really bad anxiety, on a really really bad day I sit in my car and don’t want to come in. Luckily these days are not as frequent now.

It was our first house. We didn’t know what we were doing and paid well over asking last year and then found loads of defects not picked up on survey. I’m so angry about the whole thing. I think the initial shock and emotional rollercoaster was too much and now I have lingering anxiety.

but we’re not moving. We don’t know if there will be similar problems in the next one. We’re going to stay a few more years (aim is 5) and save like crazy in the meantime.

also I worry about selling so soon. When houses are sold frequently or quickly I always wonder there’s a problem with the house or the neighbours

Well he's just gone out to the garden to sun himself - which he wouldn't do last summer - so that's something, we've put a bed in every room so he can stalk us when he feels insecure but we spent £20k on just making it livable after paying top dollar but we have to move on - the house is in a great location and it's a good size. Painting is bloody hard work though!

@WhereshallIwander so glad someone else understands! I can't tell dh as he's a real homebody and I've dragged him from here to there in the 20 years we've been together.

PS I like your user name 🙂

Gosh you sound like me. I also don’t love our road but we couldn’t afford this house on a couple roads back and this house offers what we need (or it will do when extension is done). We are starting our extension in three or four months. Looking forward to us camping out…🤣😁

Good luck! We had a loft conversion. Started in the October and finished a week before Christmas! It was definitely worth it.

Would be nice to extend out the back too but that might have to wait!

I loved mine when we were buying it, moved in and couldn’t get used to it. We have been in 8 months now and id say it only now feels like home. So it does take time.

I too hated my house, I moved 8 houses down the estate. Took me many years but now love it. Don't make any hasty decisions you may regret it. Give yourself time.

I cried the night we moved in and DH was very quiet (internally upset and worried). We'd spent all we could afford on this house but vendor left loads of crap in it (broken fridge and cooker, cabinets of mismatched glasses and chipped crockery, horrible frayed curtains) but taken the bathroom fitting, which was agreed but not to leave massive (fist sized!) holes in the wall. Took us 6 months to get settled.

But we are now here over 20 years and have been able to make it our own. And felt a lot less guilty about that because what was here was so bad so easier to get rid of mentally.

And it was pouring rain, we couldn't get the heating to work and lots went wrong in the physical move so we were utterly worn out by the process so that didn't help on night 1.

We had the same experience as PP's - both hated the house we moved in to - it was smaller but had a worse layout. It took about a year to realise that we could extend to the side -if we decided to stay. We did that 6 years after moving in. It took a good 2 years to really start to appreciate the new town we were in - not just the area around the house but further afield - there were canals and places to walk, run and ride a bike - these things became really important features to us but we really weren't aware of these "advantages" when we decided to move here. We are now 22 years down the line and could not be happier. I remember we missed all the space in our huge mid-terrace Victorian house - the early 70's house we moved in to was nothing like what we really wanted in terms of appearance but it required less maintenance and TBH - the area has improved steadily over the years with other houses also adding extensions - property prices have gone up. We could easily have moved within the first 6 months - we had talked about it. Hopefully it's not as bad as you think. You must have had your reasons for moving.